| Music plays a central role in the political philosophy of antiquity, particularly in the works of Plato and Aristotle. And yet, modern political philosophy is notably tin-eared when it comes to music's place in the cultivation of souls and cities. This study explores the reflections of the two most important modern political philosophers who take seriously the role of music in the good life: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche. Both were aspiring musicians and composers, both struggled against the most influential composers of their age, and, more significantly, both married these musical concerns to their wider philosophical projects. The dissertation discusses Rousseau and Nietzsche's views regarding the nature of music and its relation to cognition, the socio-political functions of music, the potentially explosive mixture of nationalism and art for the achievement of political unity, and finally, the role of aesthetic experience for the molding of good citizens. Taking seriously their respective desires to recapture something of antiquity, I indicate the degree to which both writers separated what the ancients had united: the sky, the city, and the soul. If Rousseau abandoned the sky (i.e. metaphysics) in an attempt to marry music to political practice, Nietzsche abandoned the city in his hyper-subjectivist aestheticism. In the musical reflections of Rousseau and Nietzsche, we are thus confronted with two distinctive manifestations of modernity's reluctance to recapture the unity of the ancient heritage. |
